Texas head coach says he's proud of the game Cade Klubnik played

$Texas head coach says he's proud of the game Cade Klubnik played$

Klubnik impressed plenty with his on-field exploits.

David Hood - Senior Writer - Sunday, December 22 2024

AUSTIN – Cade Klubnik wasn’t happy in the postgame interview area, telling the media that losing sucks. But on the big stage in his hometown, the kid put on a show that impressed Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian.

Klubnik was 26-of-43 for 336 yards and three touchdowns in the 38-24 loss to the Longhorns. Klubnik also used his legs to effect – the box score will show just five rushing yards, but in college football sacks are counted against rushing yardage.

The Tigers gained the most yards and passing yards against Texas all season, and the second-most points. The Tigers and Klubnik did all of that without the real threat of a running attack, and Sarkisian said he was impressed with the way Klubnik played.

“They made some plays. A credit to Clemson, credit to Cade. I thought Cade had a nice ballgame for them,” Sarkisian said. “He's a tough guy because there's the timing throws and then there's those off-schedule plays that he makes. I thought the one thing that they do which makes it difficult is when they call the traditional plays, he's equipped enough to see your coverages and to throw it to the right people, and he's got the talent to make those throws.

“Then they call the designed quarterback runs, whether it's quarterback draws or true quarterback runs that tax you when you're trying to deploy people to defend him, and then he has the ability to extend plays, and how many times did he get outside the pocket and make some really critical throws for them.”

Sarkisian went on to say he was proud of Klubnik’s effort.

“We knew it coming in, it was all three of those things were going to be the challenge of trying to defend him that way. I'm proud of Cade,” Sarkisian said. “I've known him for a long time, been recruiting him I feel like forever when he was in high school, and the fact that his career didn't start off maybe the way he would have liked at Clemson and there was a lot of expectations for him there, but to come out and have the season that he had this year for them, to get them to the playoffs, to be ACC champs, that's a credit to him. He's a very good football player.”

Texas defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski said there is no quit in Klubnik.

"Yeah, he's a really outstanding player because he can hurt you with his arm and he can hurt you with his legs, and he's a tough competitor. There's no quit in the guy," Kwiatkowski said. "His ability to extend plays, his ability to run the ball, that was a big challenge to us because they ran him in quarterback draws and designed quarterback runs, and they're really good at throwing the football. For us we had some different things that we were trying to chop up the front to make it hard for him to run those quarterback draws and still be sound in the back end with our coverage calls."